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Comment by kiliantics | Hacker News Reader

There are plenty reasons to be skeptical:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...

It is just so undemocratic for a handful of people to be in control of infrastructure projects that will affect the lives of millions or billions. They can so easily make a project look good that still benefits them unfairly and there is some evidence that this is what's happening.

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I dont see any claims of self dealing in those criticisms

It’s about control. Gates and Buffet have massive amounts of control over public policy due to their “donations”. We as a society lose out when a few mega billionaires have anything to do with policy.

The purpose of many charities is explicitly to influence public policy, but How does your second sentence follow from your first?

Because allowing billionaires to leverage public policy is a centralization of control. It gives single individuals too much sway. You rely on them being benevolent (they’re not) and deal with their idiosyncrasies (at best). It’s bad system design and it’s not democracy. It’s not even socialism, it’s an oligarchy.

The alternative is letting Congress decide how to spend it. Decentralized philanthropy seems to me like a better system

Sounds like you're making an argument for plutocracy.

I think it's good that taxes can solve problems a decentralized, and therefore disorganized, system will struggle with, but in the same way i don't think that a centralized economy will run as efficiently as a free market, I think philanthropy will make greater gains if a variety of parties are allowed to spend their money on what they think is important without needing collective approval.

You’re discounting scale though. Just like Microsoft destroyed competition and innovation with their monopoly (only possible with government backed IP laws), Gates eliminates competition for philanthropy and policy by force of his fortune. Gates is centralizing things, around himself.

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